One of the largest downsides to the calmer environment is that people like First that live to fight, had less to do.

It went so far that First even picked up a bit of crafting. This happened because he would check in on the forge. To see if they had any new developments.

The only way to improve your weapon was to craft it. It wouldn’t be wrong to say that First had some of the finest weapons the forgers had made.

The forge is always busy and Din had built two additional forges and upgraded them all. This left some downtime. Amateurs like First were allowed to test things out.

After making his first sword, First fell in love. The strenuous fight against the metal was enthralling to him. This was how many forgers felt.

It was a man fighting the metal itself. There was a tempo, a rhythm to it. Just like any fight. Sometimes you had to strike hard, sometimes you had to weave about.

It wouldn’t be wrong to say that First was one of the most influential people in the entire town. His presence in the forge evoked interest.

It was especially in his direct subordinates. First is a leader. And his men would emulate him in everything. If First jumped, they would jump.

The popularity of forging exploded within the ranks of military centric people. This occurrence forced Din to create one more forge.

Fortunate for Din, his resource income is staggering. His expenditure next to nothing. This was because the camp was for the most part, self sufficient.

They created their own food, tools and entertainment. There are still many things people bought from the shop, sweet food for example.

Din would only spend his resource points on necessary buildings. The people could consider themselves lucky that he considered plumbing to be important.

The accumulating resource points could be considered large. This is when it was compared to people that didn’t have control over a tier three node.

There are many things Din could do to increase his income. Some temporary, some long lasting. But they always came at the expense of the people.

In simple terms, it was taxing. He could gain more from each sale in the shop. He could make people buy food instead of giving it away. Many things could change.

Din didn’t do this because he didn’t need personal wealth. The camp didn’t require extensive structural costs or maintenance.

He couldn’t buy quality material. It had to be gathered by hand and processed. It was only then it could be used.

And this was why he put strict rules on what was allowed to be sold. Din couldn’t tell what was being bought or sold. But he saw the amount he was gaining for each transaction.

This transaction fee could be used to extrapolate what people were selling. This was how most material sellers were caught.

It wasn’t only punished. It was also demonized. It was instilled into society at large. That selling unprocessed or processed material was a sin of sorts.

People did become disgusted by the idea. After all, selling materials like that was practically stealing from everyone.

Some did make the case that the material they sold was gathered in their own time. But even that was rebuffed and ignored. No excuses were allowed.

Din could be this tyrannical because everything else was given to people for free. It was free in that they didn’t need to pay for it directly.

They did have to work. The work might be easy and short. They also had to pick a hobby to engage in. This was a type of payment. Not everyone understood this.

When tier two recipes were discovered, it was made into a spectacle. The inventor and its subordinates were heralded as geniuses.

With every tier recipe of a specific profession, a building became upgradable. The newest buildings were no longer made from clunky wood and bricks.

The structures have a slick cement coating and smooth tree beams. The sight made Din remember the ruins he had stumbled on.

That building had metal inside the cement. He was still working with subpar cement and wood. He couldn’t help but think how advanced those ruins were.

Having thought that far, he couldn’t help but think about a tier four node. If he started now. It would probably take him half a year just to take a single tier three beastnode.

It might even be longer. Considering how long the tier two nodes took. After a while he shook his head. He felt this wasn’t important now.

With the months more discoveries were made. The increase hasn’t been much, but most of it can be contributed towards the tier three support node influence.

After upgrading the area, an influx of energy gathers in the environment. The time it takes to increase quality can different between materials.

Quick sprouting plants like grasswheat are quick to adjust. This can be seen in that majority of recipes are coming from food related subjects.

Old trees take longer to improve and metals in the ground even longer. Longest are gemstones, the rate of their improvements seems contradictory.

Gemstones are a source of materials used like electrical lines for energy, most notable for its use in scription.

One of the buildings made available due to recipe discoveries and reaching a tier three village is a bestiary and a menagerie.

A menagerie is used to hold captured beasts and domesticate them. Bestiary instead is a branch of the same tree and is used to weaponize beasts.

These two buildings are the newest addition. If it wasn’t for the flag building, Din would have been thrilled to see this development.

The domestication effort had never stopped. All captured beasts were moved to cages. The animals handlers learned new methods to train the beasts.

As with everything, if there was a job, there was a person who enjoyed doing it. Many people liked working with animals.

Before, every beast would be hostile. This was now changing. Everyday they would learn more and become more adept.

Unlike other professions, the bestiary didn’t provide any recipes. What they did was provide a technique to manipulate animals.

Such a technique required long term exposure to the beasts. Without it, they beast could only be made neutral. Training required persistence.

That aside, Din could now purchase trained beasts. They were expensive. Expensive enough to make him consider not buying one. Seeing his quiet days, he finally decided against it.

As time went on and the camp progressed as expected. Materials continued to improve in quality and quantity.

With the passing of time, the most apparent changes were the children. They sprouted up like weed.

Few months into peaceful equilibrium was found. Work lessened, most of originated from the farming and fighting back any foreign beast invasions.

With less work, more people were relegated towards education. This was on all things. Din had long bought any information available.

He made this information available, and it was being used to teach children and the people alike. Ranging from poisonous herbs to advanced crafting theory.

One thing never changed. That is mandatory hobbies, a pseudo work with less direction and a more abstract purpose than the more direct labourers jobs.

With a snap of a finger the endless forest twilight turned into a year. That in turned became two years.

Three some years passed since the tier three zone was established. The population steadily increased. With new, wandering outsiders still being the largest factor.

During these three years no one stepped outside the tier three zone. The roads to and from the invasion camps became actual roads and not just stamped down grass.

Hundreds of recipes came into being. A single tier three recipe was discovered a year ago. This caused a massive celebration.

The heralded discoverer created a drink. This drink was derived from popular drinks that gave the user a pleasant feeling and some energy.

This could be considered a cooking recipe. As its origin is using farmed or harvested plants to create something consumable.

Instead of being a genius. This person stumbled on this discovery. The chances astronomical, but his actions aligned and the system pulled them through the last steps.

This drink, similar to alcohol, causes an intoxication. The people lower their inhibition and gain considerable energy.

The negative effects are next to none. The effect of the drink diminishes by half with each consumption.

If a person ceased drinking, within two days the drink will regain its former effectiveness. This was discovered early as the consumption of the drink was considerable.

There was an observable rise in progress after the drink was mass produced. It was named after the creator. Daerer, the drink called Erer.

Din had expected the next tier three recipe to pop out after it. It was however far harder to reach the next threshold.

In general, it takes multiple generations to establish a foundation of any crafting profession. Or a talented genius that is also fortunate enough to posses materials to experiment with.

All Din needed was a talented genius, as the entire town was now centered around fueling experiments.

It can’t be called unexpected that the town had no authentic geniuses. Such a person is one in a million if not billions.

They had many talented people that stood out. But talent just meant they would progress faster than the average person, they still needed to have passion and persistence.

Din could do nothing but continue to patiently wait for the day that they discovered a second tier three recipe. It also could not considered based in cooking.

In these three years, Din had never stopped carving and engraving. If anything he began spending more time on engraving than anything else.

Jao felt Din’s distance. He didn’t touch her for these last three years. She blamed it on herself. She couldn’t give him children. This how she felt.

The reality wouldn’t have been much better, but she would at least know it wasn’t her fault. Din just didn’t see the purpose in a long term plan anymore.

He wouldn’t throw away his plans for the future, but with the option of going back home to seek the guidance of his family, everything else lost color.

Over the years, a more efficient layout formed. The old village was rebuilt into something more reasonable. The houses didn’t look bad.

Everyone had running water, inside plumbing. The roads were sturdier and people now had animals to depend on. Easing many of the more menial labour jobs.

Trained animals are not cheap. Their training takes great upkeep and time. Buying one outright, is even more expensive. Majority are considered Din’s property.

But this also meant that Din could use them as a reward. Only one person had been awarded a steed of their own. And that was Daerer, for his tier three recipe.

Daerer, wasn’t actually talented. He was persistence, clumsy and ignorant. But he was passionate. He was still better than majority of his peers.

Daerer would often take his steed and walk through town. Even going on exploration for what he called rare herbs.

It is now common knowledge that quality of materials is of utmost importance when trying for a higher tier recipes.

What Daerer got when he discovered his tier three recipe was additional information about more exotic plants. He would often set out on excursions with his hundred disciples.

Daerer can be said to be the most influential crafter for the past two years. His interests now laid in discovering of rare plants and their properties.

Din would have extracted this information out of him, but he didn’t know what tier three recipes unlocked for individuals. Only assumed he would receive the same benefits. Which was wrong.

As people progress through tiers, the rewards for progression became greater. They are proportional to the difficulty. To a novice, they will be grandiose. But to an expert, only adequate.

Out of all the professions, scription was the most unpopular. Even in comparison to the newest profession, bestiary.

The patience needed for scription towers above most. Sometimes a scription requires it to be made in a single stroke. Not doing so, dramatically reduced the success rate.

There are many scriptions that appear unconnected. Such scriptions are not relying on the scription to function but the base material. These scriptions only work on specific materials.

When looking at the chances of each individual crafter, Din is not behind. His persistence and boring view of life allows him to not drown in the monotony.

Like Jao, Din has created multiple tier two recipes. But these things mean nothing in the grand scheme of things. Perhaps if there were many capable scriptionists.

With many of them, it might be feasible to boost their entire setup with scriptions. But this wasn’t the case. There were total of five people capable of replicating Din’s tier two recipes.

This meant that six people would have to inscribe one to six or more items per person in the military. This was never going to happen.

Instead Din used these scriptionist, like he did other crafters. As rewards for people. Quite a few military men and women have personally engraved weapons or defensive armour.

These items are substantially better. They require less maintenance, less chance to break in combat. The perks are obvious to the soldiers using them.

These things are still only foundational items. They have no special power to them and are only a more durable version of itself.

This is in part because tier two is too low. Tier three is still too low, but there are some exceptions in that tier.

Another addition to Din’s passing of time was to inspect gems, how they are extracted and how they are processed.

Right now, in these low tiers, these things are all simple. They just require certain finesses. A steady hand that knows what’s valuable.

He began to make trips to the gemstone mines. There he’d slowly unearth minerals. Going so far as to build a cabin.

This cabin was later expanded into a larger housing, a temporary lodgings for workers and especially, a place for the refiners to work.

Din spent a lot of his time there. Sometimes weeks at a time. This was almost neglect. But Din never oversaw any real work. He decided who decided what to do. A figured head almost.

When Din began using his own materials, once he took the time to gather and refine, his scription work saw a remarkable improvement.

Multiple reasons were for this. One was that he learned more about the how and why of gems. In general it was also because he used only what he thought were quality gems.

The refining had its part, but not in these low tier materials, the methods were crude and simple.

There is a charm in seeing something done from beginning to end. The feeling esoteric to say the least. And Din got to experience this feeling thoroughly.

If anything could dent his near impervious dedication to the great Laq Docte. It was losing himself in these affairs.

It is a subtle pleasure. The feeling of a passing year. Something slow and easy. You never know its there until its gone, its almost melancholic.

This is not finishing a job. It's pure creation. Who would say Din didn’t finish anything? He had finished thousands of sculptures. Scripted thousands of items.

He created a village, turned into a sprawling town. Town prospering. Who would say he never finished something? Did he not creating something?

But that feeling was different. The satisfaction of a job done couldn’t compare. It isn’t pride. It wasn’t hunting and cooking the pray. Only by experience could it be understood.